
MY STUDY FIRE 

MY STUDY FIRE, SECOND SERIES 

UNDER THE TREES AND ELSEWHERE 

SHORT STORIES IN LITERATURE 

ESSAYS IN LITERARY INTERPRETATION 

ESSAYS ON NATURE AND CULTURE 

BOOKS AND CULTURE 

ESSAYS ON WORK AND CULTURE 

THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT 

NORSE STORIES 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

FOREST OF ARDEN 

CHILD OF NATURE 

WORKS AND DAYS 

PARABLES OF LIFE 

MY STUDY FIRE. ILLUSTRATED 

UNDER THE TREES. Illustrated 



" The Goddess moving across the fields 





IKlAIM10ILTrOM-. , WiaDCKI , ir.-IMIA©0IE 



WOTM ©1 <£©&&■?!) ©MS BY CHARUgS-B/MONTT© 




DODD, 



MEAD A 




COPYRIGHT 1903 



i.nmi|y][J 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONORESS, 

I wo Copies Received 

OCT 14 1903 

Cup>hfcin fc.ntr> 

Put a+>~(q ot 

CLASS CL. XXc. No 

"7 D H- 4 t> 

COPY 3. 




JAMES LANE ALLEN 





ABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

THE PIPES OF THE FAUN ...... 13 

THE LYRE OF APOLLO 51 

THE SICKLE OF DEMETER 85 

POSTLUDE 115 







LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

BY 

WILL-H-LOW 



" The Goddess moving across the fields "... Frontispiece 



' The boy raised the pipes to his lips " . . Facing page 40 - 



The Lyre of Apollo 



54 



Without, the stillness of the winter night " . 



.124 




THE PIPES OF THE FAUN 



IN ARCADT 



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THE tenderest green was 
on the foliage, the whitest 
clouds were in the sky, 
and the showers were so sudden 
that the birds were hardly dry 
of one wetting before there came 
another. These swift dashes of 
rain seemed to fall out of the clear 
blue, so mysteriously did the light 
clouds dissolve into the depths of 
heaven after every rush of pattering 
drops in the woods. It was the 
first spring day. The season had 
come shyly up from the south, as 
if half afraid to trust its sensitive 
growths to the harsh airs and rough 

[15] 





.J*. 



caresses of the northern winds. 
And sky and woods wore their 
happiest smiles for the laggard 
season, and were bent on the 
gayest revels, now that the guest 
had come. 

The last traces of the snow had 
hardly vanished and there were 
damp, cool places in the shadow 
of rocks, where winter still waited 
to be driven out by those search- 
ing fingers of light which leave 
no hidden leaf or buried root un- 
touched. The woods that morn- 
ing were like an empty stage upon 
which the curtain has been rolled 
up. There were no moving figures, 
but there were murmurs of sound, 
mysterious noises, stirrings of things 
out of sight, which made one aware 
[16] 





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that the play was about to begin. 
There were signs of impatience in 
the great, silent theatre, as if the 
first lines had been already delayed 
too long. The sky and the earth 
were getting more intimate every 
hour ; secret forces, mysterious in- 
fluences, were moving in the depths 
of air, and over the surface of the 
world there played a subtle and 
elusive softness, the first faint 
breath of summer, the softest sigh 
of returning life. 

Last year's leaves lay dull red in 
the hollow between the low hills, 
and the black trunks of oaks made 
the light, slender clusters of white 
birches stand out with bright dis- 
tinctness on the slopes. The green 
on the birches was so delicate that, 

m [17] 





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looking from a little distance, it 
seemed more like a shading than 
a colour ; but the clean blue of 
the sky, blurred at times by slowly 
passing clouds dark with rain, or 
of such whiteness that they seemed 
to be erasing every trace of the 
momentary blackness, confirmed 
the faint evidence that spring 
had come. 



ir \'i 



[18] 










II 







SO, at least, thought the Faun, 
sitting at ease with his back 
against an oak, his pipe in his 
hand and his eye wandering curi- 
ously through the open spaces of 
the wood. So entirely at home 
was he that solitude or society 
was alike to him, and the speech of 
men or of animals equally plain. 
There were hints of wildness about 
him ; for he was brother to the folk 
in fur and feather that lived in the 
wood, although the light in his eye 
and the pipe in his hand showed 
that he had travelled far from the 
old instincts without having lost 
them. There were hints of human 
fellowship in his air of seeing the 

[ 21] 






world as well as being a part of 
it ; although the absence of all 
thought about himself, all ques- 
tioning of the sky and earth, made 
one aware that if he held converse 
with men he talked also with the 
creatures that slept in the fields 
and hid in the woods. 

He was stretched at ease in a 
world about which he had never 
taken thought, being born into it 
after the manner of the creatures 
that live in free and joyous use of 
the things of Nature without any 
thought of Nature herself. In him, 
however, the instinctive joy in life 
had become articulate ; he spake 
for the strange and wild instincts 
of his kind, although he could not 
speak of them. In his careless, 

[22] 



s 



unconscious, unthinking life all the 
instincts and appetites and activi- 
ties of the living things that were 
fed and housed by Nature played 
freely, joyfully, without conscious- 
ness. He had, however, the gift 
of speech ; and the silent, secretive, 
sensuous world became articulate 
on his lips and he was the inter- 
preter of that world to men. Idle, 
smiling, content alike with the sun 
and the cloud, the Faun was so 
much a part of the streaming life 
about him that he did not see its 
beauty or feel its mystery ; he was 
without apprehension or curiosity ; 
he had no tasks or duties ; there 
was no law for him save obedience 
to his own nature, which was sim- 
ple, sensuous, without thought or 

[23] 




ii in iii 



care or obligation. When he put 
his pipes to his lips and blew a few 
clear notes there were no echoes of 
human emotion or experience in 
them ; they might have rained down 
from the clouds with the song of 
the skylark, which has the quality 
of the solitude of the upper air in 
it, or they might have been borne 
gently in from a distance, like the 
tones of the waterfall over the hill. 
And yet there was something in 
them which no bird or animal nor 
any stirring of water or air could 
have put there ; a sense of the 
mounting life of the world, growing 
and straining and rushing on to 
fruition ; the stir and murmur and 
hum of bird and branch and bee ; 
the simple animal joy of sharing 

[24] 



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the gift of life with all creatures, 
without a hint of its uses, its mean- 
ing, its end, it was the song of life 
when it knows that it is life and 
all the instincts, passions, and de- 
sires awake and fulfil themselves. 



[25] 







Ill 




T 



iHESE notes, clear, soli- 
tary, penetrating, came 
like an invitation to the 
boy who had entered the wood with- 
out thought or care or desire, save 
to feel the warmth of the sun and 
to take what the day offered him. 
He had never heard such sounds 
before, but they seemed so much 
a part of the place and the time 
that he accepted them as if they 
were human speech. The Faun 
himself, visible now through the 
light growth of the birch trees, 
brought no surprise ; he, too, be- 
longed to the hour and the scene. 
Instead of shyness a sense of fel- 
lowship grew on the boy as he came 
[29] 







nearer the pipe and the strange fig- 
ure which held it. The Faun did 
not cease his fitful, vagrant music ; 
he, too, seemed to accept the boy 
as of a piece with the season. 

There was a deeper kinship be- 
tween the two than appeared at 
the moment. Each had a past 
strangely different from the other ; 
the roots of the boy's nature reach- 
ing back through long generations 
of thinking, questioning, responsible 
creatures like himself; the roots of 
the Faun's nature deep in the un- 
recorded experience of thousands 
of generations of living things that 
know all the ways of the wood and 
field and stream and air, but had 
never thought, questioned or had 
m. The Faun 



duty 



upon 



[30] 



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had climbed to the point where all 
this vast, confused, instinctive life 
had become conscious that it lived ; 
the boy had gone far on into a 
world in which instinct had be- 
come intelligence, passion weakness 
or power, appetite and desire mas- 
ter or servant. On that spring 
morning, however, they stood on 
the same plane of being ; for the 
Faun was happy in the sense of 
life and the boy was just awaken- 
ing to the desire of the eye and 
the joy of the muscles and the 
bliss of the perfect body in the 
world which plays upon it as 
the wind on the harp. He did 
not know what stirred within him, 
but he felt as if he had come to 
his own at last. 

[31] 



Br 



ft 



The notes of the pipe floated 
through the wood and were sent 
back in echoes from the hillside, 
with bird-notes intermingled, and 
the soft murmurs of tree tops gently 
swayed, and the faint tones of water 
falling from rock to rock hidden by 
a press of ferns and softened by 
mosses. The boy threw himself 
at the Faun's feet and listened ; 
and as he listened the whole world 
seemed to come to life about him 
and move together in sheer delight 
in the cherishing of the sun and the 
caressing of the clouds. The woods 
were full of nesting birds ; through 
the trees delicate patterings of feet 
were heard, as if the creatures who 
lived in the coverts and hidden 
places were abroad without fear. 

[32] 



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The boy seemed to hear a low, 
far, continuous murmur as of grow- 
ing things in the ground shyly 
reaching slender tendrils up for 
the touch of the sun which was 
to lift them out of the darkness 
of birth into the bright mystery 
of life, as of tiny leaves slowly 
unfolding on innumerable branches. 
The whole world seemed to be 
moving in a vast beginning of 
things ; creeping, shining, expand- 
ing, climbing in universal warmth 
and light. Nothing seemed com- 
plete, everything was prophetic ; 
the tide was beginning to ripple 
in from the fathomless deeps of 
being ; its ultimate sweep and vol- 
ume, foaming in the vast channels 
through the mountains and tossing 

[ 3 ] [33] 



its crested waves to the summits, 
was still far off in the summer to 
which all things moved, but of 
which there was neither thought 
nor care on that first day of 
spring. 

It was the stir of life which the 
boy heard, and the frank, free, un- 
questioning joy in it which made 
riot in the mind of the Faun ; the 
mystery and wonder of it were far 
from the thought of these two 
creatures of the season, the Faun 
who had come up the long ascent 
of animal life, and the boy who 
stood for a moment with the Faun 
at the place where joy in the sense 
of life is at the full. The ways of 
these two creatures met for one 
hour that morning in early April, 

[34] 




IV 



IV 



TO the merry piping of the 
Faun the boy laughed 
gleefully ; here .was the 
wild playmate who could take him 
deeper into the woods than he had 
ever ventured and show him the 
shy creatures who were always 
eluding his eager search. And 
the Faun, who was nearer his 
brothers of the wood than his 
brothers of the thatched roof and 
the vine trained against the wall, 
saw in the boy a fellow of his own 
mind ; to whom the wind was a 
challenge to kindred fleetness and 
the notes of the birds floating 
down the mountain side invitations 
to adventure and action. 

[39] 






iiiiu4 




The boy might have been twelve 
or thirteen ; the Faun seemed to 
be of no age ; he had never thought 
and time had left no trace on his 
brow or in his eye ; he might have 
been born with Nature, or he might 
have come with the spring. To-day 
the boy was his fellow ; next spring 
he would be so far away from him 
that the sounds of the pipes might 
never reach him again. Of this 
gulf to widen between them the 
Faun knew nothing ; it was the 
kinship of boy with boy that 
prompted him to hold out the 
pipes to the sensitive hand which 
showed the vast divergence of his- 
tory between the two. The boy 
raised the pipes to his lips and 
blew loudly through the rude joint- 

[40] 



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" The boy raised the pipes to his lips 



Wi 



ure of reeds, and then hung on 
the far- travelling sounds which he 
had set loose. There was a strange 
compelling power in them as they 
seemed to penetrate further and 
further into the wood, and seizing 
the hand of the Faun the two ran 
together up the wooded hill and 
over its crest into a world of which 
the boy had only dreamed before. 

He had seen the world a thou- 
sand times before, but now it flowed 
in upon him through all the chan- 
nels of his senses ; a rushing, sing- 
ing, tumultuous tide swept him 
along, and with the jubilant stream 
the joy of life flooded his mind and 
heart. A wild exultation seized 
him, swept him out of himself, 
and carried him on with the power 

[41] 






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and sweep of a resistless torrent. 
He ran, shouted, laughed as if some 
hidden and inarticulate force within 
him had suddenly broken bounds. 
He was fellow with the bird that 
sang on the bough and comrade 
with the shy creatures who had 
never suffered his approach before. 
If he had known what was hap- 
pening within him he would have 
understood the ancient frenzy of 
the Bacchic worshippers ; the sur- 
render to the spell of the life of the 
world, rising out of deep springs 
in the heart of things, calling with 
the potency of ancient witcheries to 
his instincts, taking possession of 
his quickening senses, and mount- 
ing with intoxicating glow to his 
imagination. 

[ 42 J 





V 



THE pipe of the Faun drew 
his feet far into the secret 
places of the woods, and 
with every step he seemed to be 
breaking some imprisonment, find- 
ing some new liberty. The Faun 
could have told him much of that 
ancient world which was old before 
man began to look, to wonder, to 
comprehend ; but the wild music 
of those few notes, so inarticulate 
but so full of the unspoken life of 
hidden and fugitive things, spoke 
to his senses as no words of human 
speech could have spoken. They 
were full of echoes of a dateless 
past, of which no memory remained 
save that which was deposited in 

[45] 






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instinct and habit ; the earliest and 
oldest form of memory. He was 
recovering the lost possession of his 
race ; the primitive experiences that 
lay behind its childhood and made 
a deep, rich, warm soil for its 
ancient divinations and for those 
dreams of an older world which 
haunt it and are always luring its 
poets to the secret homes of that 
beauty which embosoms the youth 
of men, and fills them with infinite 
longing and regret when spring 
comes flooding up the shores of 
being after the long silence and 
desolation. 

In that far-off world the Faun 

still lived, and when he blew on 

the reeds its echoes set the very 

heart of the boy vibrating with a 

[46] 



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joy whose sources were far beyond 
his ken. Through the soft splen- 
dour of the spring day, so tender 
with the fertility of immemorial 
years, so overflowing with the glad- 
ness of the births that were to be, 
the boy ran, without thought or 
care ; every sense flooded with the 
young beauty and joy of the sea- 
son ; his feet caught in the rhythm | 
of unfolding life, his imagination 
aflame with a thousand elusive in- 
tonations of pleasure, a thousand 
salutations from trees and birds 
and restless creatures keeping time 
and tune with the rhythm of the 
creative hour in wood and field 
and sky. 

In later days, when the spell had 
dissolved, what he saw on that day 
[47] 



CMA 




lay like a golden mist behind him, 
and what he heard lingered in 
faint, inarticulate echoes that set 
his pulses beating ; but he recalled 
no definite glimpses and remem- 
bered no articulate words ; he only 
knew that he had entered into the 
joy of life, and had been given the 
freedom of the world. Never again 
did he hear a song in the woods 
without pausing in hushed silence 
because he stood on the verge of 
an older world ; never again did 
he catch a sudden glimpse of the 
trunks of trees black against a dull 
red background of oak leaves or a 
wintry sky without a throbbing of 
the heart, which made him aware 
that he was in the presence of 
the oldest mysteries. 

[48] 



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A c ^ 



When night fell and a low mur- 
mur of innumerable creatures, shel- 
tering in familiar places, filled the 
woods, the boy looked in vain for 
the Faun ; but far off he heard the 
wild notes, softened by the hush 
of the hour, like the sounds of 
dreams dreamed when the world 
was young. 



^^^ 



[49] 




THE LYRE OF APOLLO 



■', 



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IT was mid-June and the world 
was in flower. The delicate 
promise of April, when the 
pipes of the Faun echoed in the 
depths of woods faintly touched 
with the tenderest green, was ful- 
filled in a mass and ripeness of 
foliage which had parted with none 
of its freshness, but had become 
like a sea of moving and whisper- 
ing greenness. The delicious heat 
of the early summer evoked a 
vagrant and elusive fragrance from 
the young grasses starred with 
flowers. The morning songs, which 
made the break of day throb with 
an ecstasy of melody, were caught 
up again and again through the 

[53] 



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long, tranquil hours by careless 
singers, happy in some hidden 
place in the meadows or sheltered 
within the edges of the wood ; and 
with these sudden bursts of hidden 
music, there came the cool breath 
of the dawn into the sultry noon. 
The world was folded in a dream of 
heat ; not arid, blasting, palpitating ; 
but caressing, vitalising, liberating. 
The earth, loved of the sun, was 
no longer coy and half afraid ; she 
had given herself wholly, and in the 
glad surrender the beauty that lay 
hidden in her heart had clothed her 
like a garment. In the fulfilment 
of her life a sudden bliss had dis- 
solved her passionless coldness into 
the life-giving warmth of universal 
fertility. 



I 



The Lyre of Apollo 




So deep was the current of life 
which flowed through the world 
and so full and sweeping the tide, 
that the youth, whom it seemed to 
overtake in the heart of the pines, 
was half intoxicated by the delicious 
draughts held to his lips, and was in 
an ecstasy of wonder and mystery 
and joy. He had known the world 
well since that early spring morn- 
ing years before when he had come 
upon the Faun, and the two had 
gone together, eager feet keeping 
time to the vagrant music of the 
pipes, to the secret places where 
the wild things live and are not 
afraid. From that hour in his boy- 
hood he had known bird and beast 
so well that he came and went 
among them even as one of them, 

[55] 








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and his voice brought no terror 
and his shadow no sudden fear as 
he wandered, glad and friendly, 
through the heart of the forest. 
For half a decade he had had the 
freedom of the field and the wood, 
and had lived like a child of nature 
in the joy and strength of the life 
that is one with the health and 
beauty of the hills and stars. 

Again and again he had seemed 
to hear, borne on the air of some 
still afternoon, the faint music of 
the pipes of the Faun, but he had 
never again met that ancient dweller 
in the woods face to face. Nor had 
he needed to ; for the fresh delight, 
the instinctive joy in the life of 
things, the free play of muscle, the 
complete surrender to the sight or 
[56] 







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sound or pleasure of the moment, 
had been his in full measure ; and 
he had lived the life of the senses 
in glad unconsciousness. And the 
years had gone by and left no 
mark on him, save the hardening 
of muscle, the filling out of limb, 
the waxing strength, the growing 
exhilaration of youth and freedom 
and infinite capacity for action and 
pleasure swiftly coming to clear 
consciousness. 



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II 




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II 

THROUGH the long years 
of boyhood Nature lay 
mirrored in his senses 
without blur or mist, and the images 
of her manifold wonder and beauty 
had sunk into the depths of his 



being. 



He had lived in the moving 



world that lay about him, stirred 
into incessant action by its constant 
appeal to his energy, caught up and 
carried forward for days together in 
a joyful rush of play ; led hither 
and thither in endless quest of little 
mysteries of sight and sound that 
teased and baffled him ; absorbed 
into complete self-forgetfulness by 
the vast continent where his lot 
was cast, which called him with a 
[61] 







fix ' 






'O 



thousand voices to exploration and 
discovery. 

Of late, however, there had come 
a touch of pain in his careless joy ; 
a sense of mystery which disturbed 
and perplexed him ; a consciousness 
of something strange and alien to 
the wild, free life he had been liv- 
ing. He no longer felt at home 
in the woods, and it seemed to 
him as if the old intimacy with 
the creatures that lived there had 
been chilled. He was no longer 
free-minded and free-hearted. He 
had lived until this hour in the 
world without him ; now the world 
within was rising into view ; he was 
coming to the knowledge of him- 
self. And that knowledge was 
"fraught with pain, as is all knowl- 

[62] 



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edge that penetrates to a man's soul 
and becomes part of him. As a 
child he had known only one world ; 
now another world was rising into 
view, vexed with mists, obscured by 
shadows ; a strange, mysterious, un- 
discovered country, full of enchant- 
ments, but elusive and baffling. 

The world he knew seemed to 
contradict and fall apart from the 
world which was slowly disclosing 
itself to him, like a planet wheeling 
out of storm and mist into an 
ordered sphere. Every morning 
brought him the joy of discovery 
and the pain of "moving about in 
worlds not realised." The old order 
of his life had suddenly vanished ; 
the sense of familiarity, of intimate 
living, of home-keeping and home- 
rs ] 





Ill 



Ill 



IN such a mood, exhilarated and 
depressed, full of mounting 
life, but with the touch of 
pain on his spirit, the youth had 
found the murmur of the pines 
soothing and restful ; like a cool 
hand laid on a hot forehead. Again 
and again, in these confused and 
perplexing months, he had fled to 
their silence and shade as to a re- 
treat in the heart of old and dear 
things. 

As he came across the fields on 
this radiant morning all the springs 
of joy were once more rising in 
him ; the young summer touched 
him through every sense, and his 
soul rushed out to meet her in a 
[67] 



"l" 
iii/iil 




passion of devotion and self-sur- 
render. The pain was stilled, the 
sense of loneliness had vanished ; 
and in their place had come a sud- 
den consciousness of new intimacies 
forming themselves with incredible 
swiftness, a deep sense of a unity 
between his spirit and the heart of 
things of which the old familiarity 
had been but a faint prophecy. 
Over the undiscovered country of 
his own soul the mists were melt- 
ing, the clouds rolling up into 
the blue and dissolving in infinite 
depths of tenderest sky, mountain 
ranges were defining their outlines 
against the sky, and the " light that 
never was on sea or land " was 
swiftly unveiling a harmony and 
unity of world with world which 

[68] 



was itself a new and higher beauty 
than had dawned before on the 
vision of youth. 

The stillness of the summer lay 
in the heart of the wood, and only 
the gentle swaying and whispering 
of the pines, caressed by the light- 
est of moving airs, made one aware 
that something stirred in the vast 
and shining silence of the sky. It 
seemed to the youth, when he had 
entered the inner sanctuary of the 
wood, as if the spirit of things were 
touching invisible chords so softly 
that they vibrated almost without 
sound. He recalled the pipes of 
the Faun, so clear, piercing, dis- 
tinct, tuned to the simplest pleas- 
ures of the senses, with the feeling 
that he had heard them echoing 
[69] 






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through the wood in some other 
life ; so remote, detached and alien 
were they to the richer mood, the 
deeper emotion, the mounting pas- 
sion, of the time and place. He 
heard them as one hears a clear, far 
cry which lies in the ear, but calls 
to nothing in one's spirit and sets 
no echoes flying in one's soul. 



m 





IV 




]A ND while he hung upon the 
/ ^ silence, with the faint, 
1 m shrill notes of the pipes 
making old music in his memory, 
suddenly, as from some deeper re- 
treat, some more ancient sanctuary, 
there rose upon the hushed air a 
melody that laid a finger on his lips 
and a hand on his heart and flooded 
the innermost recesses of his being. 
Stricken with sudden silence, mute 
under the spell of a music which 
left no thought unspoken and no 
experience unexpressed, he hung on 
the thrilling notes as if all the won- 
der and beauty and mystery of the 
world and the soul had found speech 
at last, and out of the innermost 
[73] 



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KxsmKP* 






heart of things life flowed in a tu- 
multuous, free, and joyous rush of 
sound. 

The pipes of the Faun had spoken 
to him of the joy of living, of the 
delight of motion, of the pleasure 
of the eye and ear, of the manifold 
murmur and happiness of living 
creatures when the sun makes the 
fields glad and the woods are full 
of nesting birds. It was a music 
which lay in the ear, clear and dis- 
tinct, without modulation or mys- 
tery or any touch of that rich and 
baffling complexity of motive which 
comes with the rise into sound of 
those hidden and secret forces which 
feed the roots of life and nourish all 
beauty at the sources of being ; the 
music of clear skies, of grain mov- 
[74] 



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ing with the wind in long billows 
across the fields, of softly swaying 
forests, of rivers flowing in quiet 
fulness, of birds on the wing and 
creatures of many kinds living their 
lives in glad unison ; and of a boy's 
happiness in the sight and sound of 
all these things. 

But the music upon which the 
youth hung, mute and motionless 
in the shadow of the pines, did not 
rest in the ear, nor weave its melody 
out of familiar airs heard a thousand 
times in idle or busy hours ; it flowed 
resistless and compelling into the 
secret places of the soul, and all the 
deep and far harmonies of which 
he dreamed when the mystery of 
the parts blending into one infinite 
whole subdued him were caught up 

[75] 



NY 



in it and moved together in a flood 
of fathomless sweetness. In this 
rich harmony of the full, pulsating 
life of things the earlier song of the 
play of life over the surface of the 
world was but a slender rivulet lost 
in a wide and all-embracing tide. 
Those far pipings of the Faun made 
the merry, light-hearted music of 
the world as it lay mirrored in the 
senses ; these later and penetrating 
tones made the music of the world 
as it sunk deep into the imagination 
and touched the soul of the youth. 
The prelusive notes of discovery 
were caught up and mingled with 
the sublime music of revelation ; 
the world which flashed in the sun 
was the blossom and fruit of the 
fathomless life hidden in the heart 
[76] 





Mil 



of things, and this mysterious and 
flooding life was at one with the life 
that had come to knowledge and 
consciousness in his spirit. 

The gods make the music to 
which youth moves with eager feet, 
and if the youth had thrown off the 
spell that held him mute and mo- 
tionless in the heart of the pines he 
would have seen a face which was 
long the light of a world which has 
sunk below the horizon, but from 
which the artists and poets still 
draw their inspiration, and to which 
those who make the images of beauty 
have always gone to test the perfec- 
tion of the work of their hands ; a 
face of noble and ineffable beauty ; 
the features expressive of perfect 
symmetry and of the finest individ- 
[77] 



WM 




uality ; the eyes unshadowed by 
pain, luminous, tender, glowing ; the 
great shape so divinely fashioned 
that strength was lost in beauty 
and beauty became the highest 
form of strength. 



[78] 



^&sg£b%t 




V 



ALONG way the god had 
come and manifold had 
been his wanderings ; but 
wherever he went the music of high 
heaven went with him. When he 
watched the herds in shepherd's 
guise, the sound of the strings 
touched by his hand had not only 
led the flocks, docile and happy, "but 
so filled them with life that they had 
grown as flocks had never grown be- 
fore. Healer and protector, bringer 
of light and health, the splendour of 
his face was the poetry of the world, 
the glance of his eye its prophecy, 
the trembling of the strings at his 
touch its music. He was the mas- 
ter of all living things and of the 

[6] [81] 




3-rJ 



^ 



ft 



1A 



flash and charm of the soul of 
Nature caught for a moment in 
the shimmer of leaves and the 
shining of water. 

But it was the diviner beauty, 
moving out of sight to ultimate 
ends, which gave his face its majesty 
of repose and depth of loveliness. 
For him there were no shadows ; in 
his ear no discords sounded ; for in 
him the brightness of the sky was 
prisoned and his hand made the 
music of the spheres. He saw the 
roots of things ; he heard the grasses 
growing in the darkness of the earth ; 
he marked the rising and falling of 
the tide of life in all the invisible 
channels in which it ebbs and flows ; 
in his mind all things were revealed 
in their divine order, and begin- 

[82] 



lo-\ 



\}\W 



for c~*\ ^>\- TtSPO ■' 






mm 

I 



ning and end were shown in radiant 
progression. 

And because all things were re- 
vealed to him and the order of crea- 
tion moved about him in unbroken 
unity he was the interpreter of this 
hidden harmony to men, the inspirer 
of all song, the maker of all visions, 
the master of the mystery of the 
world. In him fact and power and 
thought were blended and harmo- 
nised in the creative imagination, 
and from him flowed the stream of 
creative energy. 

And while the youth hung on 
the throbbing of the unseen lyre the 
hidden order of the world was re- 
vealed to him, and he too heard the 
vast, inarticulate murmur of life as- 
cending from form to form in the 

[88] 





lit 

depths where the forces that mould 
the mountain summits and colour 
the light that shines on them, that 
fashion the flower with delicate skill 
and drive forth the blast that blights 
it, forever build and destroy that 
they may rebuild on broader foun- 
dations and on a nobler plan. 

And the meaning of the world 
grew clear ; for the youth under- 
stood his own spirit, and in that 
knowledge the confusions vanished 
while the mystery deepened ; and 
the splendour fell on his heart so 
that it was a pain, and the mel- 
ody of it seemed too great for his 
spirit. 



[84] 



lis 



\m 



I 

F 

s- 



w 

'#1 



JPiSi 




THE SICKLE OF DEMETER 







N the great, open world of far- 
spreading fields there was a 
sense of repose. The tide 
which had fertilised all things that 
grow and bloom and bear fruit was 
beginning to ebb, though there was 
no sign of vanishing beauty on the 
face of the landscape. In the riot 
of midsummer, when the lust of 
life sometimes rose to a kind of 
Bacchic fury of delight, there had 
been no richer bloom of beauty on 
the surface of Nature than that 
which lay, half seen and half re- 
membered, on the fields in the ripe 
autumn afternoon. The rich love- 
liness that had once spread itself 
like a soft veil over all things had 

[87] 



SV°\ 




^f= 






slowly sunk to their roots, and, 
as it receded, diffused a deeper 
splendour, a more concentrated 
and enchanting beauty, over the 
tranquil fields. 

With the ripening of the season 
had come a stillness in which the 
voices of reapers and gleaners were 
heard at a great distance ; as if 
Nature had ceased to work and 
sat listening to the harvest songs 
of her children, glad in heart be- 
cause of her fertility. To the 
tumult of creative forces vitalising 
the earth afresh in the early sum- 
mer had succeeded the deep repose 
of completed work ; the noise and 
clamour of action had died in the 
silence of that meditative mood 
which follows fast upon the fin- 

[88] 






n 



ished task and reveals its quality 
and significance. 

The final transfiguration which, 
like a great torch held aloft by a 
retreating goddess, was to flash 
from the heart of things a sudden, 
brief, and ineffable splendour, was 
still unlighted, and the earth rested 
in quiet content, ripe with all fruit- 
fulness, laden with the wealth of 
vine and grain and bending bough. 
Through long, tranquil days the 
rhythm of the scythe had beat on 
the ear, and brought back an 
ancient music heard in forgotten 
years when the race was young 
and played with the gods who still 
haunted the world they had made. 
The heavy-laden wain had moved 
slowly across the fields, like some 
[89] 



te^ 



A V 



m 



'&*'■<% 






rude barge overweighted with an 
opulent cargo, and awkwardly drift- 
ing through the long afternoons to 
its anchorage beside the great, 
empty barns. A steady heat, not 
blinding and consuming, but per- 
vasive and penetrating, evoked the 
sweetness of ripened grain, and 
mellow fruits seemed to distil and 
express their sweetness in the air. 
The fragrance of fruitage, so much 
richer than that of the budding 
time, filled the world and made 
the heart glad with the sense of 
fulfilment and possession. 



[90] 





WwmB^K^ 


WJ&sfflz 


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lillllt 


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imiii 




*'■ "-iLiS*^ 


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fill 

Will 







II 



II 

TO the man who came 
slowly across the fields 
the whole world smelled 
of the ripened summer ; of all the 
rich juices which had mounted out 
of the soul in a million million 
spears and stalks and blades and 
stems ; of all the potencies of form 
and colour and odour, hidden in 
the darkness, that had escaped to 
take shape in innumerable grasses, 
flowers, and shrubs with a skill 
surpassing the thought of man, and 
had breathed into them a sweetness 
deep as the fathomless purity of 
Nature ; of the mysterious fountain 
of life at the heart of things, which 



so many men have 

[93] 



sought 



but 









mm 



m 



\»&* 




JWK 




which no man has found, which 
had silently overflowed and vitalised 
all things, and was now receding as 
silently and mysteriously as it had 
risen. 

Life had once more expressed it- 
self and was again silent ; the old 
miracle had been performed anew 
under the eyes of all men, and was 
as incomprehensible to these latest 
as it had been to the earliest work- 
ers in the fields ; the mystery had 
been revealed afresh and was still 
impenetrable ; the earth had fed her 
children and filled their storehouses 
and granaries against the time of 
need ; but no man had seen the lift 
of her hand or caught the sound of 
her foot in all those months when 
the world could hardly contain the 
[91] 







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J, 



■$ 






^m^ 



;m;- 



£ 






,ji 



Mwi 



'£.£«2%Utf 





manifold and tremendous energies 
she kept at work. 

Time, the ripener, had made 
friends with the man who medi- 
tated in the well-gleaned fields and 
had enriched him year by year. 
Far back in boyhood he had heard 
the pipes of the Faun and followed 
them, glad and free, into the depths 
of the wood and lived at ease with 
the creatures that hide there ; the 
birds paid no more attention to him 
than to other familiar and friendly 
things ; he had early won the free- 
dom of the fields and been as one 
of the wild things that have no other 
roof but the sky, and are fed by the 
providence of Nature. 

And then, in his golden youth, 
when the imagination kindles and 
[9 5 J 



:h 



the commonest things are touched 
with poetry, he had listened like 
one enchanted to the full, rich tones 
of Apollo's lyre, vibrating to the 
touch of the secret forces and re- 
vealing the mystery and splendour 
and sublime order of things in such 
a swell and sweep of melody as 
set all the worlds singing together. 
And in that divine music the world 
that had lain outspread in his senses 
in all its varied beauty sank into his 
imagination and broadened immeas- 
urably into a universe whose love- 
liness was the bloom of the streaming 
life at its heart, whose aspects and 
movements and forces were signs and 
words of his own inner life, whose 
vastness and order and variety were 
a sublime symbol of an intelligence 
[96] 



*m 



^ 



everywhere at work but nowhere 
revealed, which was at one with 
his own spirit. 

These two great revelations had 
made his life one long, orderly, quiet 
unfolding ; as the physical charac- 
teristics of one age had passed away 
its spiritual quality had been wrought 
into him, and he had gone on from 
one period to another with stead- 
ily increasing wealth of impression, 
knowledge, and power. Instead of 
weakening, the years had enriched 
him ; at the ripe moment in each 
succeeding period he had trans- 
muted the physical into spiritual 
strength, and his past lived in his 
present, unwasted and unforgotten. 
Old now in years, the joy and fresh- 
ness of childhood, the ardour and 

[ 7 ] [97] 



&* 



m 



m 

I? I 



s^a^J-, 



enthusiasm of youth, the organised 
and tempered strength of maturity, 
were his in higher measure and finer 
quality than he had possessed them 
before. For him the Faun still 
piped far afield when the tenderest 
green was on the trees ; for him the 
far-sounding chords of Apollo's lyre 
were still struck when the beauty 
of the summer flooded the world ; 
and now, at the summit of the long 
ascent of the years, he walked with 
Nature with quick eye, kindling im- 
agination, and a repose in his heart 
as deep as that which folded the 
world in a vast peace. 



V. 



[98] 



f'-^W^Ml 






'Sm^rJm 



V, 







Ill 



L.cFC. 



,--' 



H 




AND for him, as for all who 
live with Nature, the hour 
L. of revelation was not 
ended ; upon the later as upon the 
earlier years there was to come 
the breath of the divine. As he 
walked the stillness seemed to 
deepen ; the voices of reapers and 
gleaners died into silence ; the great 
barges came to anchorage beside the 
barns. A hush fell upon the world 
toward sunset, so akin to that which 
fills the dim arches and deep aisles 
of cathedrals that the old man 
paused, looked thoughtfully over 
the landscape, and seated himself 
beside a familiar tree. The air 
was warm, and moved so gently 

[101] 




that it seemed like the caress of un- 
seen hand ; the western sky turned 
into gold and the world became a 
temple the splendour of which had 
been foreshowed, but never realised 
before. All things were silent ; for 
it was the vesper hour of the sum- 
mer and Nature was both shrine 
and worshipper. 

Reverent and worshipful the man 
sat with uncovered head, and eyes 
which seemed to see the vision of 
the years silently passing, laden 
with gifts. And while he waited 
and remembered and worshipped, 
across the level stretches of the 
fields, far toward the horizon, a 
golden mist seemed to move toward 
him, borne lightly forward by an 
unseen current of air. Slowly it 

[ 102 ] 



i 



drew nearer, and as it came the 
silence deepened and a sudden awe 
ran through the world. The mist 
grew more dense and real, and 
within it outlines denned and shapes 
formed themselves, and the heart 
of the man told him that again 
the gods were abroad. Faint and 
far he seemed to hear the clear, 
shrill notes of the Faun, and nearer 
and deeper and clearer the music 
of the lyre breathed through the 
silence the great song of the creative 
moment ; and then, preluded by the 
simple melody of childhood and the 
richer music of youth, the Goddess 
stood in the fields and he saw her 
move her divinely moulded arms as 
if in benediction. The glory of the 
west shone behind her like burnished 

[103] 




gold and wrapped her in a splen- 
dour which at once revealed and hid 
her ; her yellow hair was like a nim- 
bus round her benignant face, and 
she moved as one who possessed the 
world and enriched it without self- 
impoverishment. Custodian of the 
fields, guardian of the sower and the 
reaper, the mellow air was incense 
to her and the bursting graneries 
and barns were her treasure-houses. 
Behind her lay the long road of 
her wanderings, and as it had blos- 
somed before her feet, so now, in 
the hour of her enthronement, it 
gathered unto itself, like a robe of 
cloth of gold, all the rich beauty 
it had won while the sun had ca- 
ressed and cherished it. Before the 
Goddess, like a splendid offering, 

[ 104] 




the richness of the world was 
spread ; and in her its fruitful proc- 
esses were incarnated and personi- 
fied. The life that recorded its 
earliest coming in the most deli- 
cate and elusive forms of beauty, 
and, later, rose into a kind of 
Bacchic fury of creative energy 
until the whole world throbbed 
and pulsed with the divine intox- 
ication of mounting and climbing 
and blossoming vitality, was hushed 
and harmonised in a sublime repose ; 
its passion completely expressed, its 
secret and hidden forces sent to their 
farthest ends, its mysterious proc- 
esses accomplished, its work done 
with divine joy and perfection. 

The ancient symbolism had been 
manifest again in the vision of all 

[105] 



r l)Mi 



M\ 




I !/ 








who could understand : the frozen 
earth ; the slow-moving sun ; the 
hard, black seed sown in darkness ; 
the searching of the light and heat, 
lovingly caressing the fields ; the 
death of the seed, the birth of the 
flower and grain ; the slender blade 
creeping up out of the grave of the 
husk into the world of life ; the 
growing stalk caught in the uni- 
versal stirring of things ; the time 
of flowering, redolent of fragrance 
and jubilant with the songs of birds ; 
the ripening in the long, quiet sum- 
mer days, when all things were 
glad of life and silently grew in 
its fulness ; and now, at the end, 
the fruit-bearing and harvesting, 
the consummation of it all and the 
crowning of the year. 



»i>v 




IV 



IV 

THE Goddess, whose yel- 
low hair was like a nim- 
bus of sunshine about her, 
brought the fragrance of the early 
summer in her train, and crocus and 
hyacinth, narcissus and violet, daffo- 
dil, arbutus, and hepatica were in 
the aii* in delicate suggestion ; in 
her coming -the rose, which lies on 
the heart of nature, the ravishing 
symbol of her passion, bloomed 
again in all its deep-dyed loveli- 
ness. With her, too, moved the 
rich, ardent, passionate, stirring and 
climbing and unfolding of midsum- 
mer, when the earth bares her heart 
to the sun and gives herself in a 
great surrender. In the Goddess, 
[109] 



3F 



*&&?„ 



moving across the fields with a step 
so light and buoyant that she seemed 
a vision floating in air, the full, ripe 
putting forth of the life of the world, 
radiant with visible beauty to the 
eye and fathomlessly significant of 
the invisible order of things to the 
imagination, was personified. 

And now, in the supreme hour 
when all the forces of Nature ful- 
filled themselves in fruitage, the 
silent watcher of the ancient mys- 
tery saw in the coming and pres- 
ence of the Goddess the symbol of 
his own life. To him, as to the 
open fields, there had been the time 
of the sowing and of the reaping ; 
to him, as to the landscape, there 
had been the early glow of life, the 
delicate beauty, the fresh and sweet 
[no] 



^.< 









wmm^f. 



;s 





>r 



beginnings of growth ; the opening 
of the spirit through the senses, like 
a flower unfolding petal after petal 
to the glance of the sun and the 
touch of the air. To him, also, had 
come the effulgence of the young 
summer when the imagination, kin- 
dling a sudden fire and light within, 
had flooded the senses and streamed 
out over the world and touched all 
things with a glory not their own, 
and the life of the youth had been 
a rushing tide of joy and strength 
and exultant energy ; deep, tumul- 
tuous and passionate with the glad- 
ness and the pain of a meaning at 
the heart too great for any kind of 
speech. And now had come the 
broad content, the deep serenity, 
the fathomless repose of powers put 




forth, energy expressed, functions 
fulfilled, growth accomplished. In 
the silence which enfolded the God- 
dess and brought the sense of in- 
finite peace with it the watcher was 
aware of the harmony between his 
life and the life of Nature. The 
two had moved so long in unison 
that they had become as one, set to 
the same music, borne onward to 
the same ends ; each fulfilling itself 
in obedience to that law of order, 
of beauty, of fruitfulness, under 
which the world has bloomed and 
borne its fruit through uncounted 
centuries. 

And while he watched and medi- 
tated, and the meaning of it all 
grew clear and sank into his soul, 
the golden west softly veiled itself 

[112] 




w 



POSTLUDE 



k KV* -%*■ 



AGE had come graciously 
to the man who sat be- 
^ fore the wide hearth. 
There had been no sudden change, 
no withering of the affections, no 
abrupt decline of power ; the tide 
had gone out gently and softly in 
the hush at the end of the day and 
left a deep peace behind it. There 
had been a long ripening, and then 
a half-realised translation of the 
physical into spiritual energies ; 
knowledge had deepened into wis- 
dom, and in the cool of the even- 
ing there had come that tranquil 
meditation which distils sweetness 
out of arduous activities and 
[117] 




: A .: 

.„ii.-"". ■■ I* 






'iiiiii 
fiiK/i 



passionate experiences ; the pause 
which intervenes between succes- 
sive stages of unfolding ; the silence 
in which one parts from a life end- 
ing and greets a life beginning. As 
the grain ripens for the gleaning 
and the fruit for the plucking, so 
the spirit of a man ripens in the 
quietness of age. 

In this deep serenity the man sat 
by the fire which had become a bed 
of glowing embers and warmed his 
soul as well as his body. And there 
passed before him the vision of the 
life within and the life without 
mounting together, season after sea- 
son, to perfect fruition. He saw 
the tender twig, green and sensi- 
tive, growing shyly in the shadow 
of great trees. He saw the full, 

[118] 



k 



m 



n 



#^ 



m 



Ws 



round trunk, with heavy branches 
dense with foliage, expanding 
quietly through immemorial years, 
and assimilating with itself the 
forces of soil and air and sky 
until it held the ripe juices of 
centuries of summers. He saw the 
tree in its full maturity, standing 
in the strength of complete growth 
and ripeness. He heard its crash 
when the axe of the woodman had 
done its work ; he had watched the 
earliest flame creeping between the 
logs, and bursting at length into 
a blaze in which all the forgotten 
summers that had given it of their 
vitality conspired together to recall 
the splendour of golden hours far 
down the horizon of the past. And 
now, its growth completely accom- 
[119] 



m- 



I 
A 



M*WVifk%. 



W- 



7* 




/.V!/ 




II 




kSj 






II 

THIS parable, old as the 
earth and new as the slen- 
derest sapling in the woods, 
the old man read again with a deep 
and tranquil joy. There was a true 
kinship between him and the life 
going out in light and warmth at 
his feet, as there was between him 
and all things that live within the 
wide empire of Nature. As he sat 
there, with whitened locks but with 
the heart of youth, tranquil and ex- 
pectant, the light shone on the path 
by which he had come and it lay be- 
fore him like a road across a rolling 
country upon which one looks down 
from some friendly hill. Far off 
against the horizon he saw the boy, 

[123] 






breaking joyfully into the vast play- 
ground of childhood, where the 
mightiest forces sport with children 
and the most significant and impres- 
sive forms become the symbols of 
their young fancies ; and he caught 
once more the piercing tones of the 
pipes of the Faun. 

And travelling along the road, he 
overtook the youth, eager, exultant, 
open-eyed, running with swift feet, 
his soul kindling into a great flame 
and the familiar landscape changing 
into fairyland at the touch of the 
master magician ; and again, as of 
old, there came the flooding mel- 
ody, streaming up from the heart 
of things, which swept from the 
lyre of the god and ran to the 
ends of the world. 

[ 124 ] 



o 



4 







" Without, the stillness of the winter night " 




>r 



Once more the road lengthened 
and passed through fields of ripened 
grain ; and in the mellow silence 
there rose a mist against the hori- 
zon, slowly moving nearer, and out 
of illusive mystery of light and 
shadow emerged the Goddess of 
the yellow hair, for whom the 
earth yields up her store of vital- 
ity, and in whom all things that 
fulfil themselves in perfect growth 
are personified. 

Without, the stillness of the win- 
ter night filled the wide heavens set 
with a thousand stars. The earth 
was hidden out of sight by a great 
fall of snow, which had wrought 
magical changes in the familiar 
landscape. Long ago the last har- 
vest-field had been gleaned, and 

[125] 



n 



l! f\ 1 /I Vm\ 1 1 t-»T _ -^vw\-l "^ ^tLSywpiII*? 




Mlliiil^^^^^^ 




M liUflfiKPiml^ N^^^lffl 




B^^iiw 





the latest load safely housed in the 
great barns. The meadows lay cold 
and sterile in the fierce winds that 
swept them ; and the shining heav- 
ens seemed to be infinitely distant 
from the earth over which they had 
brooded in the long summer days. 

The old man saw the stainless 
whiteness on the stretches of meadow 
and the icy glitter of the wintry 
stars, but there was no shadow on 
his face. The fields, like the tree, 
had lived their life to the end and 
borne their fruit. The glow was 
fading among the embers, and he 
overlaid them with ashes ; to-mor- 
row another hand would uncover 
them, and their last fingering vital- 
ity would light another fire. Deep 
under the snow he heard the stir- 

[126] 



rings of the life that was making 
ready for another outpouring of 
blossom and fruit. 

To-night a sinking fire, an ice- 
bound world, a body smitted with 
age ; to-morrow the glow of an- 
other flame, the beauty of another 
summer, the reach and splendour 
of a larger life ! 




11 



fill 
lilSH 



OCT 14 1908 




<&cC&. 



